Contents
| I. | In Which Philomel Sings | [ 7] |
| II. | A Princess Passes | [ 24] |
| III. | Jane Knits | [ 34] |
| IV. | Beauty Waits | [ 44] |
| V. | The Ugly Duckling | [ 60] |
| VI. | “Stay in the Field, Oh, Warrior!” | [ 70] |
| VII. | A Famished Pilgrim | [ 81] |
| VIII. | Jane as Deputy | [ 97] |
| IX. | The Scarecrow | [ 105] |
| X. | Baldy as Ambassador | [ 119] |
| XI. | The Dim Lantern | [ 134] |
| XII. | The Ice Palace | [ 155] |
| XIII. | Jane Pours Tea | [ 170] |
| XIV. | A Telegram | [ 183] |
| XV. | Evans Plays the Game | [ 192] |
| XVI. | The Costume Ball | [ 204] |
| XVII. | News for the Town-Crier | [ 214] |
| XVIII. | An Interlude | [ 227] |
| XIX. | Surrender | [ 240] |
| XX. | Paper Lace | [ 248] |
| XXI. | Voices in the Dark | [ 258] |
| XXII. | At the Old Inn | [ 268] |
| XXIII. | Spring Comes to Sherwood | [ 278] |
| XXIV. | Haunted | [ 297] |
| XXV. | Again the Lantern | [ 304] |
| XXVI. | The Discordant Note | [ 316] |
| XXVII. | Flight | [ 327] |
| XXVIII. | In the Pine Grove | [ 335] |
| XXIX. | Jane Dreams | [ 340] |
The Dim Lantern
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH PHILOMEL SINGS
Sherwood Park is twelve miles from Washington. Starting as a somewhat pretentious suburb on the main line of a railroad, it was blessed with easy accessibility until encroaching trolleys swept the tide of settlement away from it, and left it high and dry—its train service, unable to compete with modern motor vehicles, increasingly inefficient.
Property values, inevitably, decreased. The little suburb degenerated, grew less fashionable. People who might have added social luster to its gatherings moved away. The frame houses, which at first had made such a brave showing, became a bit down at the heel. Most of them, built before the revival of good taste in architecture, seemed top-heavy and dull with their imitation towers, their fretted balconies, their gray and brown coloring, their bands of contrasting shingles tied like sashes around their middles.
The Barnes cottage was saved from the universal lack of loveliness by its simple lines, its white paint and green blinds. Yet the paint had peeled in places, and the concrete steps which followed the line of the two terraces were cracked and worn.
Old Baldwin Barnes had bought his house on the instalment plan, and his children were still paying for it. Old Baldwin had succumbed to the deadly monotony of writing the same inscription on red slips through thirty years of faithful service in the Pension Office, and had left the world with his debts behind him.